Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Wherefore the Law is holy,and the commandment is holy, and just, and good.Romans 7:12

Everyone who commits sin is also transgressing the Law,for sin is lawlessness.1John 3:4

When did Paul write Romans 7:12? When did John write 1John 3:4? Before the New Testament began, or after? Afterwards, of course. But note that Paul did not say, “the Law was holy”. He said, “the Law IS holy”. And if in the apostle Paul’s day, the Law of Moses was holy, then the Law of Moses is still holy. Nothing has happened that would change the status of the Law from Paul’s day until now. The New Covenant that Jesus purchased with his blood has not been amended, and never will be. It is an eternal covenant.

This attitude of reverence for the Law is found throughout the NT. Jesus himself honored his Father by recognizing the holiness and the authority of the Law that his Father gave Israel: “Don’t suppose that I’ve come to destroy the Law or the prophets; I didn’t come to destroy but to fulfill. I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or serif of the Law shall by any means pass away until all things have come to pass (Matt. 5:17-18).

The single most important thing about the Law of Moses that anyone can know is simply that it was God’s Law, not Moses’. It was not the work of human genius; it was revealed from God to Moses and Israel. When God finished giving Moses the Law, He commanded him straitly, “Do not add one thing to this Law, or leave one thing out!” There is not a single sentence in the Law which God gave to Moses that is from man. The whole thing came by revelation of God. The importance of this truth cannot be overstated.

In our time, the world is devoted to the gods of evolution. These demon spirits, gods of this world, have infected every aspect of public life in this culture. What gets most of the attention is the demon of geological and anthropological evolution, but the worst of those evolutionary gods is the demon of theological evolution. That spirit influences ministers and believers of every ilk to think of the faith of Christ as a stage of theological evolution that evolved from the OT Law and prophets into a much higher form, more sophisticated and therefore, more worthy of mankind. The spirit of evolution would have you think that since the law is an older version of true faith, we can no longer trust what it tells us about life, ourselves, and God. This demon of evolution would also have you believe that you have evolved into a higher form of life than Moses and David, who loved God’s Law.

But what Moses and other men of God said about God was not evidence of how far they had evolved from monkeyhood. Every word in the Law that Moses wrote came by revelation from God, who does not evolve. Our Creator was perfect before He created anything; He was perfect in the beginning of Creation; He is perfect now; He will be perfect when heaven and earth pass away; and He will always be perfect. He will never improve, and the only way we will ever improve is if we come down from our high evolutionary horses and humble ourselves to be transformed by His power to be like Him; to think as He thinks, to speak as He speaks, to feel as He feels, and to do as He does! This is what Jesus did, and that is what made him sinless.

The spirit of theological evolution would have you think of the Law of Moses as an outmoded relic of the past, the product of ancient, unsophisticated minds. But Jesus didn’t feel that way. He said if you did not believe Moses, you could not believe him. Paul said the law was “our schoolmaster, to lead us to Christ.” And a long time after the Spirit came, John said the definition of sin is still “transgression of the Law.” The reason those holy men didn’t feel the way that the demon of theological evolution feels about the Law is that God doesn’t feel that way. When Paul said, “The Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good”, he said it because that is what God thinks.

The Law of Moses did not evolve from anything. It came directly from God, fully formed. The New Testament did not evolve from the Law. It was revealed from heaven when the Son was revealed. Men’s vain ideas, traditions, and doctrines evolve, but God’s truth is eternally the same.

About Me

I am a slave of Jesus who, in obedience to him, has come out of the fragmented religious system of Christianity. I love God's people and want all of us who love the Lord Jesus to be together. This can never happen inside Christianity because that religion is the very thing that divides us. If God is ever going to answer the prayer Jesus prayed in John 17 and make all His children one, it will be accomplished only by the power of the holy Spirit, and it will happen apart from the hundreds of conflicting doctrines and traditions that make up the Christian religion. We come out of all that confusion to offer ourselves to God for healing -- healing from our own ideas and ways. Let's all just admit that we know nothing, and are nothing, and that we need help from Jesus, and let him make us one!